At the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center (UCHSC) a decision to create a more rigorous, advanced didactic program for training clinicians in the field of clinical investigation was made in 1993. Dr. Robert Schrier, Chairman of Medicine, provided the leadership and guidance to this effort. Dr. Schrier proposed that a new Doctorate in Philosophy be developed for the Clinical Science Program in order to optimally train the next generation of clinician-scientists. In 1996 when Dr. James Crapo was recruited to become the Chair of Medicine at National Jewish Medical and Research Center, Dr. Schrier asked him to become the program director for this new Ph.D. program. Faculty were recruited, a substantial portion of the curriculum developed, and in May 1997 the final approval for this Ph.D. program was obtained from the Colorado Commission on Higher Education. The first students entered the program in the summer of 1997. The announcement of this K30 Clinical Research Curriculum Award occurred at an opportune time for UCHSC. Initial "seed funding" support for our Ph.D. program in Clinical Science has been provided internally from the Chancellor of USHSC (Dr. Shore) and from the Chairperson of the Department of Medicine (Dr. Schrier). The financial support that is requested in this K30 grant will allow us to address two primary goals: (1) enhance the doctoral program by improving the quality and scope of curriculum being developed for our Ph.D. candidates, and (2) increase the number of courses/sections offered in order to create a new certificate program that will appeal to a larger cross section of clinical trainees. Without the K30 award funding, it will not be possible to offer this larger array of coursework or to create the proposed new certificate program given existing UCHSC funding constraints. The K30 award and its financial support are critically needed to ensure the success of this training program. It will fund both a refinement and an expansion of the curriculum, provide supplementary salary support for the time of our faculty teachers, and partially support the administrative faculty/staff of the program. It will help ensure that a new generation of clinician trainees will be well equipped to pursue lifelong academic careers in clinical investigation - at the most exciting time ever in the field of biomedical research.